


moving on is hard [brief hiatus]

by yuto_da



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempt at Humor, Eventual Fluff, Gen, Heavy Angst, M/M, its jsut a lot of angst, this is mainly cause seonghwa keeps mentioning his time rpe-debut and i thought of it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 18:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17688941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuto_da/pseuds/yuto_da
Summary: “Fuck….” Seonghwa ran a hand through his hair and looked back at the mirror, at himself. He had to continue. It was what was expected of him, of every one in the company. They were the future of the company, they had to bear the weight and the stress and continue on. They weren’t supposed to give up and were to keep on fighting.Seonghwa went and played the song again. He had to.





	moving on is hard [brief hiatus]

**Author's Note:**

> I gotta stop doing this though. 
> 
> But i've been meaning to write an angsty ATEEZ story for a while and this was born, idk if it's any good though lol.

Seonghwa always had it hard. He thought he wasn’t a good enough singer (his coaches agreed), he thought his dance was extremely lacking in both power and co-ordination and he was doing rather poorly in school. He had absolutely nothing going for him and it had only been two weeks since he started training. Seonghwa was no quitter, he liked pushing his limits and going as far as he could but his limits had been pushed and pushed and pushed till he didn’t know whether he was pushing on purely will and determination or if it was just his mind continuously making him go on and on and on even when he wanted to give up.

Seonghwa sighed, frustrated for the fourth time in the past hour. He looked at himself in the mirror and felt like bashing the mirror in and along with it his previous foolish mindset that it would have been easy, that being an idol wasn’t hard, everyone did it now, so it must be easy, right? Seonghwa looked up at the ceiling and gritted his jaw. He knew he had to keep going, evaluation was next week and he was nowhere near ready, but looking up at the blank white ceiling its only scars being the lighting that was impaled onto it, he considered giving up.  


“Fuck….” Seonghwa ran a hand through his hair and looked back at the mirror, at himself. He had to continue. It was what was expected of him, of every one in the company. They were the future of the company, they had to bear the weight and the stress and continue on. They weren’t supposed to give up and were to keep on fighting.

Seonghwa went and played the song again. He had to.

* * *

 

By a miracle alone, Seonghwa managed to not only practice until he was satisfied with the result but also get a passing response on his evaluation. He was exhausted and on the brink of collapse, but it was fine...He was fine.

“Thank you.” Seonghwa bowed and exited the room, a small skip in his step as he went. He faltered, however, when he remembered the additional bit of information he had been told before he left the room. _‘There will be seven new trainees from different institutions and places joining the company today. You’re roughly the same age, and we would like you to keep an eye on them and help them if necessary. Is that possible, Seonghwa-ssi?’_

Seonghwa had no way to refuse especially when he thought of the great inconvenience he would be in with seven knew people to meet and take care of. He nodded respectfully and exited the room, all thoughts of  his successful evaluation  thrown out with the new minds  and souls to help and comfort when things got tough.

Two hours later, Seonghwa was greeted by a knock on the door before a staff member appeared. Seonghwa rushed to the music and paused it. He looked at the staff and realization hit him when the staff mentioned that the people he had been told about yesterday had arrived. Seonghwa sighed internally and pulled on a smile.

“They’re here. I’ll show them in now.” The staff said and Seonghwa bowed in thanks.

The staff moved to the side and one by one seven heads walked into the room, each one looking around in wonder before settling on him. Seonghwa felt a bit unnerved having so many people staring at him but pushed that down. He had to get used to it. He was going to be an idol, his entire job consisted of standing before strangers and performing, what was he going to do if he couldn’t even handle a few boys blatantly assessing him with their gaze.

“Hello,” The boys bowed and Seonghwa bowed back. One by one they began introducing themselves. 

“Hello, I’m Hongjoong, and the eldest one in the group.”

“Hello, I’m Yunho, and the second eldest.”

“Hello, I’m Yeosang and I’m the second person in the 1999 line.”

“Hello, I’m San and I’m the third person in the 1999 line.”

“Hello, I’m Mingi and I’m the fourth person in the 1999 line.”

“Hello, I’m Wooyoung and I’m the youngest in the 1999 line.”

“Hello, I’m Jongho, the maknae of the group.”

Seonghwa stared at Hongjoong and wondered if he’d have to call him hyung. He had been the eldest member in the company so randomly calling another person  _ ‘hyung’ _ would feel really weird.

“I’m Seonghwa, it’s nice to meet you.”

“So, how did you all meet?” Seonghwa asked and looked at all of them. They were sitting in a circle in the practice room and Seonghwa sat closer to the mirror, afraid of making them uncomfortable if he was too close or overly friendly.

“We met during a training lesson at a dance class.” Hongjoong was the one to speak up. “I was dancing there with Wooyoung, San and Yeosang when Yunho, Mingi and Jongho joined the class. We were the only other Korean students there so we quickly became close.”

“Aaah….” Seonghwa said.  _ How nice. _ “I see.”

“And you, Seonghwa-hyung?” This time it was Jongho, the maknae, who spoke up. “How did you join the company?”

“I was scouted on the street on my way from school.” Seonghwa smiled wistfully, bitterly as he reminisced on the day that changed his entire life. “I thought they were suspicious people trying to kidnap me," Seonghwa said and laughed at the memory. "-so I ran from them but they persisted and I ended up taking their card and went back home to look them up, and here I am now.”

“Oooh...I see…” Jongho said and Seonghwa kept quiet, throwing the group back into another brief moment in awkward silence.

“Ah, this is really awkward.” Yunho abruptly said and Seonghwa looked at him, eyebrow raised. “Can’t we do something else? It feels weird sitting here and not talking.”

Hongjoong smacked Yunho’s meaty thigh and bowed in apology. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what is wrong with him.”

“It’s fine, Hongjoong-ah. Yunho is right, it was getting awkward." Seonghwa stood up and went to the music player. "As much as I would like to get to know all of you better, we need to begin practicing. There's only a few weeks before the next evaluation so we need to start working."  


* * *

Seonghwa was actually genuinely surprised at how his fellow trainees were at dancing. All of them were really good at dancing, and were really flexible. Especially San, Wooyoung, Yunho and Mingi -but he learned they had been dancing since they were kids and it sort of made sense.

Hongjoong and Jongho were also surprisingly good dancers as well, but whereas San and Wooyoung did as they were taught -with their own flair, of course- Yunho, Mingi and Hongjoong paid heavy attention to their choreo and tried to make sure every detail was in place.

Seognhwa had to admit, it was nice -really nice- having other people around who paid attention to such things and helped him improve, but this wasn’t the case for all of them. Seonghwa and Yeosang had a harder time keeping up with all of them, which meant late night practices that lead to them sometimes falling asleep in the practice room.

Today was also one of those days. Seonghwa was having a hard time mastering the moves and he began getting stressed and frustrated at himself. It wasn’t like he didn’t know why he wasn’t performing well. He did. They all did. Tomorrow was the end of the month which meant evaluation day was coming in a few hours and the stress was beginning to show in their performance, which meant, everyone was getting frustrated or agitated.

“Fuck…” Seonghwa cursed and ran a hand through his hair, messing it up more than it already was. He had missed a crucial step in their choreo and the guilt was beginning to kill him from the inside. 

“I’m sorry. It was my fault.” Seonghwa said and looked down at the wood floor, leaving his hair to act as a curtain and obscure his face from view. “Can we do it again?”

Hongjoong nodded and tapped him on the back, silently encouraging him and comforting him. “Let’s do it again!” And the music started again.

* * *

 

That night found Seonghwa in the practice room again. The others had long since gone back to the dorms and were probably asleep. Seonghwa glanced at the clock above the door and it read ten minutes to eleven p.m. Hongjoong was prbably still in the studio, working on improving his rap as well as testing his hand in composing. Yunho and Mingi would probably still be awake and playing games on Yunho’s bed before falling asleep while San and Wooyoung would be asleep, and so would Yeosang and Jongho. 

Seonghwa had told Hongjoong he was going to the practice room for a bit, and ignored the worried look on their unofficial leader’s face. Seonghwa knew what Hongjoong wanted to say but he didn’t want to hear it and walked away before Hongjoong could reply and tell him to stay. Seonghwa had reached to the practice room with the full intention on working on his dance but thirty minutes later found him laying down on the cold floor, feet raised high in the air as his mind ran miles and miles.

The first thing Seonghwa thought about was how attached he’d become to the other trainees. Hongjoong, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung and Jongho had quickly become the most important thing to him, and Seonghwa wished he’d known how it had happened, or at the very least been given a crash course on how to be a good teammate, unofficial mother and trainee.

He had been scraping by on the last title but recently, bit by bit, step by step, he’d began considering that he was doing pretty decently on the first title. It hadn’t helped in the beginning to be rejected for his singing but pass for his dancing. It had just inadvertently told him that he was severely lacking in one of the three most important rules for being an idol, and that had been a heavy weight to bear. 

Seonghwa had noticed some improvement in his singing skills over the past few years since he became a trainee but he was still insecure about how he sounded. He thought each time he went to vocal training that he sounded gritty and rough, like tires screeching on wet tarmac, or the squelching sound shoes made when they got wet. He did not like it and over time, began hating how he sounded and avoided singing outside of vocal training or warm-ups, preferring to practice on his own when everyone else was either asleep or out of the room.

And soon after, like dominoes, the one thing he had pride in also began to falter. He began falling behind in the dances, taking more than half the amount it took other trainees to learn the dance let alone perfect it. Having issues with his co-ordination soon followed and it soon reached to the point Seonghwa wondered if he was even necessary as a trainee since all he did was endlessly fuck up. 

But that toxic and demeaning mindset began changing when he was introduced to his new friends. 

Seonghwa had been alone in the company for nearly three years. He had been set to debut in two other groups but the only information he’d been given three months past their debut was that things hadn’t worked out but there was another group and he had a high chance of being in the line up. He had been disappointed since he hadn’t managed to debut in the first group but the second opportunity pushed all his sad thoughts away. However, like the first time, the debut was cancelled and Seonghwa was never told why. 

Which was why suddenly having seven strangers join the company and be set for a debut -Seonghwa tried hard not to be excited but it was hard- was a rather scary moment for him. Unlike the first two times, this time he was meeting and getting to know the members pre-hand. He didn’t know  why he couldn’t meet those other members back then, but he’d never asked and just thought that that was how it was sometimes. But this time, it was different. This time, it even felt different. He felt different.

Seonghwa wasn’t sure how he could explain it but he felt more…comfortable in his skin. Prior to their meeting, Seonghwa had always been uncomfortable in anything he did, dancing or singing. He’d always felt uncomfortable, and always thought he needed to do more, that he was severely lacking and needed to work even harder. But after meeting the seven boys he now considered his best friends, his greatest treasure, and his family, Seonghwa felt like he was finally finding comfort in his own skin and in his own talent.

* * *

Two months later found Seonghwa, Yunho, Hongjoong, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung, Jongho and their latest addition Junyoung, on the way to their daily dance lessons in America. They had been attending the classes for over three weeks and this week was set to be their final week at class and in America.

Seonghwa made sure all eight of them had carried their bottles of water and clean towels before herding them into the building. They stopped at the entrance and waved goodbye at the camera filming them for their pre-debut show and entered the building.

* * *

 

Seonghwa emerged from the building with his members trailing behind him, exhausted beyond all imagination. He looked behind him and was greeted with the sight of his members mirroring the same physical appearance that he had. 

“Waaaahhh….” Wooyoung said, loudly chugging back his tumbler filled with water. “That was so cool!!”

Seonghwa begged to differ but he was a bit occupied with slurping up every droplet from his own tumbler. 

“And Yunho got featured in a video!!” San said, reminding them all of that incredible moment in the dance room.

Seonghwa and the others all cheered for Yunho, some raising their tumblers as a cheer, too drained to clap or shout, while others waved their hand as congratulations. Wooyoung, the one person Seonghwa -after Yunho- knew to have that much energy and stamina inside him, was jumping around and screaming loudly for Yunho.

Yunho grinned and cheekily bowed, accepting all the praise and congratulations. Wooyoung took that opportunity and jumped onto Yunho’s back, making the taller man bow even further down.

“Aaahh...Wooyoung-ie, you’re heavy.” Yunho complained, but straightened out and held Wooyoung up by his thighs. Wooyoung laughed like a child seeing snow fall down for the first time and clinged onto Yunho tightly, but not enough to choke or hurt him.

“That’s really great, Yunho. Congratulations!” Hongjoong said and lifted his tumbler up. “To Yunho’s first appearance in a dance music video! Congratulations!”

They all lifted their tumblers up and clicked them against each other like imaginary beer bottles. Seonghwa snorted at how weird they must look. Seven boys standing huddled together, tumblers raised high in cheers while one was being carried on another one’s back. Not to mention, they were also drenched in sweat.

Acting like it really was beer, they tipped their heads back and chugged it all down. Hongjoong and Seonghwa being the adults and also the ones who have _actually_ drank beer, did the _‘aaah’_ sound after and wiped their mouths with the back of their hands, and proceeded to die of laughter after doing so.

Seonghwa was laughing so hard that he managed to forget about the pain in his body and the guilt of not being chosen as well.

* * *

 


End file.
